LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

to that sound, is always slightly melancholy, and Evelyn could not but think a little of the pleasure of emerging from the silence of solitude, of seeing and being seen, of finding friends from whom she had been long parted, and a dazzling vision of life which was all the brighter from being partially forgotten, and never very perfectly known. From where she sat she could see the glare of the carriage lamps, and now and then some glimpses of the persons within—a lady’s white toilette surging up at the window or a brilliant shirt front looking almost like another lamp inside. It amused her to watch that stream flow on.

      And then there came over her a dark shadow, the vision of the man who had been so young and so full of life when she saw him last, and who was so death-like and fallen now. The thought chilled her suddenly to the heart. She drew back from the window, and wrapped herself in a shawl, with the shudder of a cold which was not physical but spiritual. In the midst of all that ceaseless loudness of life and movement and pleasure, and of the vision which had visited her own brain of lighted rooms, and animated faces, and brilliant talk—to drop back to that wreck of existence, the helpless man leaning upon his servant’s arm, bundled up like a piece of goods, unresisting, compelled to submit to those cares which were an indignity, yet which were necessary to very existence! The echo came back to Evelyn’s heart. If there was in her mind, who in reality cared for none of these things, a little sentiment of loneliness as she saw the stream of life go by, what must there be in his, to whom society was life, and who was cut off from all its pleasures? Her imagination followed him to the prison of his weakness, his melancholy home, with this imperative servant who tended and ruled all his movements, for his sole society. God help him! What a condition to come to, after all the experiences of his life!

      Should she ever meet him again, she had asked herself, partly with a vaguely formed wish of saying some word of kindness to so great a sufferer, partly with a shrinking reluctance to give herself the pain of looking upon his humiliation again? But it was almost as great a shock as on the first meeting to see him coming along the park as she walked to Lady Leighton’s next day. He was being drawn along in his wheeled chair by the man who had bundled him up so summarily on the previous occasion. Evelyn would have hurried on, but he held out his hand appealingly, and even called her name as she endeavoured to pass. “Won’t you stop and speak to me?” he said. It was impossible to resist that appeal. She stood by him looking down upon his ashy countenance, the loose lips and half-open mouth which babbled rather than talked, and which it required an effort at first to understand. “Will you sit down a little and talk?” he said. “It’s a pleasure I don’t often have, a talk with an old friend. Sit there, and I’ll have my chair drawn beside you. I hope you won’t think yourself a victim, as I fear some of my friends do——”

      “Oh no,” she said anxiously, “don’t think so: I—was going to see Madeline—but it will not matter——”

      “Oh, she can spare you for half an hour.”

      It was with dismay that Evelyn heard this, but how could she resist the power of his weakness and fallen estate? He had his chair drawn up in front of the one she had taken, very near her, and with a gesture dismissed his servant, who went and took up his position with his back against a tree, and his eyes upon the master who was also his patient. The sight of this reminder of his extreme weakness and precarious condition was almost more than Evelyn’s nerves could bear.

      “We are a wonderful contrast, you and I,” he said; “you so young and fair, just entering upon life, and I leaving it, a decrepid old man.”

      “You know,” she said, “that I am not young and fair any more than you are old. I am grieved to see you so ill; but I hope——”

      “There is no room for hope. To go on like this for many years, which they say is possible, is not much worth hoping for, is it? Still, I would bear it for various reasons. But I am not likely to be tried. I am a wreck—and my wife only lived two years—I suppose you knew that.”

      “I had heard that Mrs. Saumarez died.”

      “Yes—I’d have come to you for consolation had I dared.”

      “It was better not,” said Evelyn, while a subdued flash of indignation shot out much against her will from her downcast eyes.

      “That was what I thought. When a thing does not succeed at first it is better not to try to get fire out of the ashes,” he said didactically; “but between us two, there is no difficulty in seeing which has the best of it. I should like to call and make Mr. Rowland’s acquaintance. But you see the plight in which I am. It is almost impossible for me to get up a stair——”

      “My husband—does not mean to remain in London,” she said hurriedly. “We are going to Scotland at once.”

      “To a place he has bought, I suppose? I hear that he has a great fortune—and I am most heartily glad of it for your sake.”

      She replied hurriedly, with a slight bow of acquiescence. It was the strangest subject to choose for discussion: but yet it was very difficult to find any subject. “You told me the other day,” she said, “about your children.”

      “I am very thankful to you for asking. I wanted to speak of them. I have a boy and girl, with only a year between them—provided for more or less; but who is to look after them when I am gone? Their mother’s family I never got on with. They are the most worldly-minded people. I should not like my little Rosamond to fall into their hands.”

      There was a pause: for Evelyn found that she had nothing to say. It was so extraordinary to sit here, the depositary of Edward Saumarez’s confidences, listening to the account of his anxieties—she who was so little likely to be of any help.

      “How old is she?” she managed to ask at last.

      “Rosamond? How long is it since we were—so much together? A long time. I dare say more than twenty years.”

      “Something like that.”

      “Ah well,” he said with a sigh, “I married about a year after. They’re nineteen and twenty, or thereabouts. Rosamond, they tell me, ought to be brought out; but what is the good of bringing out a girl into the world who has no one to protect her? Nobody but a worldly-minded aunt who will sell her for what she will bring—marry her off her hands as quickly as possible; that is all she will think of. It may seem strange to you, but my little girl is proud of me, dreadful object as I am.”

      “Why should it seem strange? It would be very unnatural if she was not.”

      “She is the only one in the world who cares a brass farthing whether I live or die.” As Evelyn raised her eyes full of pity, she was suddenly aware that he was watching her, watching for some tell-tale flush or gesture which should give a tacit denial to what he said. He, like Lady Leighton, was of opinion that a woman never forgets, and dreadful object as he allowed himself to be, the man’s vanity would fain have been fed by some sign that the woman beside him, whom he had abandoned so basely, whose heart he had done his best to break, still cherished something of the old feeling, and was his still. He was disconcerted by the calm compassion in her eyes.

      “Eddy is as cold as a stone,” he said; “he is like his mother’s people. He doesn’t see why an old fellow like me should keep dragging on. He minds no more than Jarvis does—less, for I am Jarvis’s living, and to keep me alive is the best thing for him. But it would be better for Eddy, he thinks, if I were out of the way.”

      “Please do not speak so; I don’t believe that any son really entertains such thoughts.”

      “Ah, that shows how little you know. You have not been in society all these years. Eddy is philosophical, and thinks that I have very little good of my life, which is true enough, and that he would have a great deal, which is quite as true.”

      “Even if it were so, he would not be his own master—at nineteen,” Evelyn said.

      “Twenty—he is the eldest. Of course he would be better off in that case. He would have more freedom, and a better allowance; and he would be of more importance, not the second but the first.”

Скачать книгу